Playing a little Catch-up

4 days.

15 hours

44 minutes

and 

40 seconds

until I board the plane to DC.

Kind of lame, counting down, I know.

A lot of stuff has happened since I blogged 16 days ago.

We are *finally* getting our roof fixed from the tornado back in April.

This is the mess that has been happening since Friday:

Shingles in the front yard

Dumpster full of mess!

I am so over being woken up by hammering at 5 in the morning.

Also, this puppy,

turned 1!

And this girl,

Spent almost 2 weeks in Nashville practicing "Annie in a nutshell". 

It was Annie the musical shortened.

And on Monday I received this;

in the mail along with an orientation book and a letter.

The letter informed me - 13 days before orientation - that I am to know the names and how they are spelled and be able to recognized the faces of 535 senators and representatives.

13 days!

So immediately I started.

Then I realized that some of these names I can not pronounce, such as this name

or this one

or this one

So I googled  and found a website that told me that this name,

is pronounced

Fah - la - o - mah - vu - en - gah

and this name

is pronounced

Sehn - sehn - bren - na

and this name

is pronounced

A - kah - kah

But some names I did know, and some I thought I knew.

Like this name

Sewell, easy enough.

You would think it would be pronounced

See - well.....

See - well, that isn't how it is pronounced.

This name is said like

Seal.

Crazy right!

I guess that is just the business of working in politics, learning funny names.